Presently, an electronic commerce website can include front-end categories and back-end categories. The back-end categories or back-end product or service categories refer to a hierarchical product or service category relation, often recorded in the transaction flow of an electronic commerce website and used in the back-end for transaction accounting. For example, a hierarchical product back-end category may include an upper-level back-end category “mobile phone”, which in turn may include lower-level back-end categories such as “Nokia mobile phone”, “domestic mobile phone” and “Samsung mobile phone”. The back-end category is often relatively stable and adjusted infrequently.
Front-end category or front-end product or service category refers to a hierarchical product or service category relation exhibited or presented on a product presentation page of an electronic commerce website for viewing by users, and it is used to guide web page presentation to users. Usually, a front-end category may include or otherwise be associated to one or more back-end categories and may be frequently adjusted by a website administrator, so it is often flexible. For example, the back-end categories “Nokia mobile phone”, “domestic mobile phone” and “Samsung mobile phone”, etc. may be associated to the front-end category “hot mobile phone”, and a user may be linked to a corresponding product page via the front-end category “hot mobile phone”.
Presently, electronic commerce website administrator typically can only easily see the overall transaction events of an electronic commerce web site and the overall transaction events of individual products. The administrator in general cannot conveniently know which front-end category through which the users browse the product information that ultimately leads to the purchase transaction. An administrator therefore cannot conveniently know whether the design of the front-end category such as the organizational structure of the front-end category is reasonable and whether each product is well presented to users. An effective product representation is important for increasing product turnover.